


A Tragic Fantasy Tale

by SlingBlade



Category: Sleeping Beauty (1959), Swan Princess (1994), The Black Cauldron (1985), The Princess and the Goblin - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-04-07 09:43:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14078133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlingBlade/pseuds/SlingBlade
Summary: When I was a child my mother used to tell me bedtime stories using the things I liked to create fantastical tales woven seemingly out of thin air to fascinate me and fill my sleep with wondrous dreams.Following her death I began to do the same with my siblings though never to the same degree as she ever did.This story is the written form of one of those tales I created for my two youngest siblings who never met my mother and so had to rely on myself to give them the stories she once told to me.I took several fantasy movies that I had enjoyed when I'd been younger and interwove their various characters and plots together to create something both fantastic and tragic and filling my siblings' minds with tales of magic, kings, princesses and goblins.





	A Tragic Fantasy Tale

In the Nord Sea to the north across the Islian channel from Landis stood the kingdom of King William the Great. His title wasn't some pompous namesake that had been bestowed upon him by flatterers nor was it a case of ego. No, it was title well earned and given to him by the people he ruled over. Even his enemies called him 'Great William' in their addresses to his person. In the course of his life he had taken his backwater kingdom upon the Isle of Baal and turned it into a prosperous naval and mercantile power amidst the kingdoms of the north. He had defended his realm from enemies within and without and earned the respect of all. However despite all these achievements he had yet to produce an heir and was now in the latter half of his years. The powers that be watched intently, wondering what Great William would do to combat this latest crisis.  
Then, surprisingly, the Queen became pregnant. After years of infertility she bore two daughters, though tragically she lost her life in the birthing. Bereaved as he was at the death of his much beloved wife, William was equally overjoyed at the birth of his twin girls whom he named Odile and Odette. The kingdom rejoiced. There was now not one, but two heirs to the throne. William the Great's line was secured.  
Across the channel, Queen Nieubertta of Laeclund and cousin to William's deceased wife wrote to the rejoicing king with a proposal. Her son Derrick required a wife and William's position would be strengthened with a male heir apparent. Would William consent to the betrothal of one of his daughters with Derrick?  
William considered this proposal at length and concluded that such an arrangement was mutually beneficial. It was decided that Odette would be sent across the channel every summer to stay with Nieubertta in the hopes that she and Derrick would fall in love. Meanwhile, Odile remained at home and was taught the ways of court and the laws of the land should she inherit instead of Odette.  
For a time this arrangement seemed to work, however as time went by troubling signs of the girls' dispositions showed themselves. While Odette grew to be kind and loving, Odile became jealous and cruel. This concerned William greatly however he could find no means to change Odile's nature and so instead watched her intently in the hopes that with age she would become milder in her vicious nature.  
The years passed and the plan seemed to be working, at least on Derrick's side of things for the young prince was indeed quite in love with Odette by the time they'd reached the appropriate age for marriage. There was one problem however. Odette did not love Derrick. She had instead fallen in love with the cabin boy of the ship that had transported her across the channel every summer and back again in the fall. The young man, a captain now in his own respect, returned her love fervently though cautiously as he was well aware of the gulf between their stations.  
When William learned of this forbidden love he summoned the Captain to his court and chartered him to sail far to the south beyond the Middling Sea as William's emissary to establish trade with the far off kingdoms there. When Odette heard the news she pleaded with her love to take her with him, she cared not where he sailed, just so long as they could be together. The Captain reluctantly agreed to meet her on the eve of his sailing and carry her away with him.  
Jealous Odile, having long resented the apparent freedom given to her sister, could not stand the notion that Odette would now escape her royal obligations while she was tied down to them indefinitely. She went to the meeting place to say goodbye to her sister, and plunged a dagger into Odette's heart before throwing her into the lake at the base of the castle to drown if she did not die of her wounds first.  
When the Captain came to take Odette he instead found Odile who tried to pass as her twin. However the Captain found her out and when he discovered what had been done to his beloved Odette he strangled Odile on the spot in a blind rage. In a stroke King William's dynasty had been undone and the plans he had shared with Queen Nieubertta were destroyed. The following day when it was discovered what had happened William wept for his daughters and cursed the Captain.  
Many called for the Captain's death but William refused, finding a fate far more cruel than mere death. He asked his court enchanter to lay a spell across the Captain that would bar him forever from the world of men. And so the Captain was changed into a great winged beast, his screams of agony turning to roars of fury. William threw the beast from the highest tower in his castle and let it find its own way from his kingdom, it flew away shrieking its pain for all to hear before vanishing into the horizon. The bewitching of the Captain was to have far reaching consequences that Great William would not live to see.  
For the moment though he had a far more pressing issue. Succession. Having lost his wife and his two daughters and well past the prime of his life, William did the only thing he could. He named Derrick, Nieubertta's son in Laeclund as his heir apparent. There was great uproar over this decision but none could suggest a more agreeable course of action and so it was decreed. It was shortly after this declartion that William met his end.  
Returning from an extended hunting trip, King William's entourage was attacked and slaughtered to a man, the king himself eviscerated and left for the scavengers to feast upon. Derrick came into his throne amidst a swath of blood. Nieubertta abdicated shortly afterwards and King Derrick ruled over two mighty kingdoms straddling the Islian Channel. He eventually took a wife, having fallen in love with the daughter of King William's court enchanter, a powerful enchantress in her own right and through her bore two daughters. With the birth of Eilonwy and Iriny it seemed that William the Great's violent ending had ushered in another era of peace. Such things rarely last and so it was with this.  
While Derrick was away in Landis securing Laeclund's borders, evil shadows and whispers rose out of the mountains to the north of his Islian kingdom. One of the ancient enemies of man had arisen, goblins, stirred to war by an evil sorceress. With her husband gone the Queen led his forces in his name against the goblin menace, throwing them back into the mountains with her daughters at her side. Seeing her forces rebuffed, the sorceress took matters into her own hands and slaughtered not only the Queen in a duel of magic that shook the earth and rattled the heavens but the forces that had marched north with her. Eilonwy and Iriny were lost in the confusion and found themselves hunted through the northern forests by the goblins.  
They were saved by a pair of boys, a druid's apprentice named Taran and the son of a miner named Gurdy. The two boys took the girls back to their village, saying that it was safe from goblin and sorceress both. Once there the girls discovered the reason for this safety was not the villagers though they were fierce and proud, but instead a great winged beast that patrolled the forests at night, stalking the goblins amidst the trees and slaughtering them in droves.  
Eilonwy and Iriny had grown up hearing the stories from their mother of the Captain turned into a beast by their grandfather and wondered if this was that same man however they had no means to approach the beast and instead approached Dalben with their questions. The aged druid only told them that the beast had lived in the surrounding forests for years and had defended the village and its inhabitants without any indication as to why it did this. Further inquiry was forestalled when the goblins again attacked, only this time the beast was unable to keep them at bay and the villagers had to fight for their lives.  
It seemed hopeless until King Derrick arrived with the remainder of his army and ravaged the goblins, driving them back into the mountains in bloodied tatters. The sorceress again came forth to bolster her forces, this time in the form of a great fire-spitting dragon. It seemed certain that Derrick and his forces would be killed, facing the same fate as his wife had. However in the final moments when all hope was lost the great beast from the forest blinded the dragon, though it was wounded mortally in the effort as the sorceress bathed it in emerald fire and drove it from her person. So blessed, Derrick drove his blade deep into the dragon's chest, cutting out the heart of the sorceress and ending her terror for good.  
Eilonwy and Iriny went in search of the creature after the battle was won and found Taran, Gurdy, and Dalben tending to its wounds in the woods. It was dying and could not escape their approach though it growled at them in menacing warning. When their father the king joined them its eyes lit with recognition and a truly vicious snarl escaped its ragged blood flecked lips, revealing rows of sharp serrated teeth. And with that last act of defiance, the beast died. What happened next could only be described as miraculous. Two swans, one white and one black, alighted besides the dead beast and shed golden tears which swirled in a glowing light around themselves and the beast. Derrick and the rest stared in wide eyed wonder as the Captain stood before them along with Odile and Odette. The trio stood there for a moment, before the swirling golden light engulfed them and they vanished.  
Badly shaken by what he had witnessed, Derrick took his daughters home with him and tried to forget what he had seen. In time he allowed the girls to be courted, Eilonwy by Taran and Iriny by Gurdy. He bequeathed to Eilonwy and Taran his southern kingdom and the north to Iriny and Gurdy, definitively dividing once more the kingdoms his mother and King William had sought to unite. Derrick never recovered from the loss of his wife or the sight of the twin princesses and the Captain, never taking a love again. Upon his deathbed, his Enchantress Queen came to him in a shower of light, and walked with him hand in hand into the afterlife.  
His daughters Eilonwy and Iriny ruled their kingdoms and wisdom and unity for the rest of their lives. Guiding the peoples of their kingdoms on to greatness and solidifying the standing of Laeclund and the Islian Kingdom upon the realms of Landis as the two royal houses stood as allies. This alliance would bring both kingdoms together through kinship as marriage had not. Throughout the generations the story of the Captain and the Twin Princesses would be told again and again to all that would listen to the tragic story that had led to the formation of one of Landis' most formidable dynastic houses.


End file.
